Ideology

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April 30, 2013 by Rachel

Is Austerity a Mistake?

A new paper from researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogo ff, has set the wonk world ablaze by debunking a 2010 study from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, Growth In a Time of Debt. Reinhart and Rogoff claimed to have found a “main result is that…median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower.” According to Michael Konczal,

This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget states their study “found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth.” The Washington Post editorial board takes it as an economic consensus view, stating that “debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.”

However, when their results were replicated by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, they discovered a trifecta of mistakes and biases that essentially invalidated the study – whimsical weighting of national economies, selective exclusion of data that didn’t support their premise, and a coding error on the original Excel spreadsheet that failed to include five countries in the overall average.

ESCANDALO! Liberal economists who had expressed serious misgivings about the study since it was released quickly jumped into the fray, from Matt Yglesias’s thorough series of critiques to Paul Krugman’s history lesson on the tumultuous love affair that number-crunchers must have with their harsh mistress, Excel. However, as exciting as it is to watch guys in glasses argue over coding and spreadsheet columns, Jonathan Chait reminds us that the Rogoff and Reinhart paper was A) the starting point for the Bowles-Simpson Commission and B) the intellectual justification for a massive, devastating rise in unemployment here, and in Europe.

However, if any politician who used the flawed Rogoff and Reinhart study as a justification for embracing austerity measures changes their position now that it has been proven to be junk science, I will mail $5.00 to your home tomorrow.*

*First come, first serve until I run out of $5 bills. So, basically one person.

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April 14, 2013 by Rachel

Tokenism 101

Last week, whether you parked at the 50 Yard Line or rolled on the Informative Avenue, the GOP’s much-vaunted new Latino outreach efforts did not appear to be going well. Even Senator Don Young’s non-apology apology for casually tossing out a racial slur – “in my day, the word meant something different,” which, no it didn’t – indicated a much deeper problem.

Similarly, when Rand Paul went to Howard University last week, he offended the audience by assuming that they – elite students at a top university – did not know that Frederick Douglass was a Republican, while appearing to forget entirely about the Republican Party’s more recent racial history. According to Jamelle Bouie,

At no point did Paul acknowledge Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater’s racial demagoguery, or Ronald Reagan’s decision to denounce “welfare queens” and embrace “states’ rights” while campaigning in Philadelphia, Mississippi—where three civil-rights workers were murdered by white supremacists. Instead, he focused his time and attention on the 19th-century history of the GOP…I’m not sure Paul deserves any praise for his performance. It would be one thing if Paul had gone to Howard eager to listen as well as speak. Instead, he condescended with a dishonest and revisionist history of the GOP. “He didn’t say anything I didn’t expect,” said one student, a senior majoring in sociology and economics. I couldn’t agree more.

The modern Republican party believes that the only kind of racism that truly exists is reverse racism, and that affirmative action exemplifies this. However, this point of view results in considerable cognitive dissonance, as it requires overlooking basically any statistical or objective form of measurement (income levels, educational achievement, professional advancement, incarceration rates, political offices, and so forth) in favor of more…dubious explanations. Mitt Romney, in addition to his infamous 47% comments, offered one such insight after he was booed by the NAACP: “…if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy – more free stuff.”

“They,” meaning considerably more than 47% of the country (including 93% of black voters, 71% of Latinos, 73% of Asian Americans, 69% of Jewish voters, 67% of Native Americans, 76% of gay voters, 60% of youth under 30, and 55% of women), were not buying what the Republicans were selling. Due to these staggering deficits, Republicans find themselves with a particularly shallow bench of minority talent. Yet somehow, the powers that be within the GOP have decided that it is not their product, the actual policies, that voters have rejected; the problem lies only in the packaging.

However, with this dearth of qualified conservatives of color, over and over again Republicans have pulled up unripe backbenchers (Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson) who promptly embarrassed themselves on the national stage – because if you don’t believe in affirmative action, chances are you won’t execute it very well.

If Republicans intend to win over any voters outside of their core white male demographic, simply re-wording their mission statement more politely won’t cut it. Nor will sprinkling in a few Spanish words, or having them read by a person of color; it’s a form of condescension that is both blatant and deeply offensive. According to reporting by Buzzfeed,

One former RNC field staffer, who is Hispanic, described a culture of cynicism among his predominantly white colleagues when it came to minority outreach. He said that in his office, whenever they were notified of a new Republican outreach effort, they would pass around a Beanie Baby — which they had dubbed the “pander bear” — and make fun of the “tokenism.”
“Any kind of racially specific campaign activity was often treated with skepticism by white staffers,” he said.

I know that feel, bro.

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March 2, 2013 by Rachel

We’re all being trolled


Much has been made over the past few weeks of two of the younger, more attractive members of the Phelps clan publicly splitting with their mother and grandfather, Fred Phelps, and deciding that maybe God doesn’t hate dead soldiers and gay people so much after all. Per Westboro Baptist Church spokesman Steve Drain:

“‘We can’t control whether or not somebody decides, when they grow up, that they don’t want to be here,’ Drain said. ‘Those two girls were kind of straddling the idea that they wanted to be of the world but that they would also miss their family, the only thing they ever knew. If they continue with the position that they have, those two girls, yeah, they’re going to hell.'”

The girls, Megan and Grace, understandably take a less brimstone-oriented tone in their own statement, a blog post, natch, titled after a lovely song by earnest indie darlings the Avett Brothers, which begins with a Batman quote. Megan asserts that, “At WBC, reciting lines from pop culture is par for the course. And why not? The sentiments they express are readily identifiable by the masses – and shifting their meaning is as easy as giving them new context.”

And this brings home a long-held suspicion: the Westboro Baptist Church is performance art.

I have only one piece of evidence to support this thesis, but it’s quite compelling:

This video is amazing and amusing on multiple levels, but it’s at the 4:37 mark that the jig is up. The upside down Canadian flag. It’s too perfect, right? Think about it: if a very clever pro-equality activist were to design the most offputting, ludicrous straw man to make the opposing case, could they improve upon the Phelps family? Sure, you could make them Nazis, but having them be Baptists is just much more elegant. And for a group as media-savvy and well-funded as they are (tens of thousands of protests in dozens of cities ain’t cheap), they are cognizant of the affects of their actions, and that they are widely considered to be the most hated family in America. That’s not a title you earn by accident. I’ve encountered a number of true believers in my day who are committed enough to engage in many acts well outside of general social conditioning, like plastering graphic full-color photos of mangled fetuses on the side of their vehicle, or gleefully describing their certain doom to strangers. But the one thing that none of those diehards would ever in a million years do, is to laugh at their own beliefs. The way these WBC members are giggling at the absurdity of the lyrics as they sing them? These people are in on the joke, y’all.

Furthermore, if you take into account the degree to which gay rights have advanced since 1991, when WBC first started waving fluorescent signs reading “Fags Eat Poop,” and how they have stepped up their game at crucial moments (advancing from picketing the funerals of AIDS casualties to picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, for instance, a move both designed and guaranteed to alienate even their natural allies), it’s pretty clear that they are demonstrating the reductio ad absurdem endgame of homophobia with absolute self-knowledge and clarity of purpose. What makes it art, you ask? The little touches, as when they made a weekly target of a local hardware store which sells Swedish vacuums. The reasoning behind this choice is every bit as convoluted as you might expect, because the choice itself is completely arbitrary. The sole purpose, I believe, is to discredit a specific point of view with a scorched-earth thoroughness and a delightful soupçon of whimsy.

Have you ever seen Andy Kaufman and Shirley Phelps Roper in the same place? I REST MY CASE.

Take notes, Joaquin Phoenix: this is how it is done.

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February 24, 2013 by Rachel

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things: the Unconscious Roots of Conservative Ideology

fox red tie

The ideal of democracy – a well-informed public engaged in good faith in a passionate, yet reasoned debate – has never truly existed. Still, if one removes the qualifiers from the previous statement, it is relatively close to the actual American practice of self-governance.

Yet, the gulf between almost-universally endorsed political abstracts and specific policies becomes painfully apparent when the polity attempts to apply them in the real world. For instance, when Herbert McClosky and John Zaller examined attitudes towards “capitalism” and “democracy,” principles which are theoretically linked, they found that “The evidence on this point is unequivocal: people who are most firmly attached to democratic values tend to exhibit the least amount of support for capitalism,” and vice versa.

With an inherent but invisible conflict brewing beneath the generalities that the public widely agrees upon, heuristics can be an extremely useful tool to develop a sort of mental shorthand for both diehard ideologues and the politically unsophisticated masses. Rather than becoming an expert on every subject, most citizens necessarily rely on a combination of personal experience and cues from elites. Nonetheless, as scientists are fond of noting, the plural of anecdote is not ‘data,’ and a reliance on one’s own standpoint and social group alone often results in problematic inconsistencies. This incoherence between abstract idealism and functional reality is particularly evident within the extensive research into the operational-symbolic paradoxes of conservative ideology. Analysis into how psychosocial predispositions act on political ideology assists in identifying errors in forming policy views, and ultimately in determining how occasionally contradictory political beliefs can be simultaneously held.

Continue reading →

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February 12, 2013 by Rachel

SOTU Liveblog

6:08 PM: Everybody got your drinking games prepared? Who will be the camera hog as POTUS approaches the podium?

6:12: Al Sharpton is old.Tweety is possibly drunk, as always. Late breaking no doy! You don’t say!

6:14: Haha, John Boehner is so miserable. Every time he reluctantly stands, take a shot! Every time he cries, finish the bottle!

6:17: Starting off with foreign policy, didn’t see that coming

6:20: Pelosi, Warren, Biden, and Waters all serving Power Purple realness

6:19: Al Franken! Did you know he can draw a map of the US from memory? Like, flawlessly?

6:23: Clearly, POTUS has been taking notes from Explainer-in-Chief Clinton.

6:24: Tax reform! The kids LOVE THAT stuff!

6:28: Oh snap, he just called out manufactured crises in general and the debt ceiling nonsense specifically. Democrats go wild! Republicans look like they are holding back farts.

6:30: Tim Cook, your most memorable feature is that you are not Steve Jobs. But thanks for bringing back manufacturing, that FoxConn situation was a hot mess.

6:34: Nobody will ever convince me that Henry Waxman is not a cartoon mouse transformed into a human by a powerful, benevolent wizard.

6:35: Climate change! OMG finally. Thank the sweet baby Jesus. Now – policies? “Bi-partisan market-based solution” doesn’t actually mean anything. But, an executive order? Hey now. HEY now.

6:45: Listening to second half of the SOTU on the radio on the way home. I miss Joe Biden and John Boehner’s ridiculous expressions.

Education reform! I am surprised by the scope of this speech, he is swinging for the fences and flattering the red states while he’s at it. This is legit making my bleeding heart sing.

6:49: Yes. For-profit scam schools need to get handled.

6:50: Immigration reform! Violence Against Women Act! Paycheck Fairness Act! Big ups to Joey B, a series of less-than-subtle digs at Congress!

6:53: Raising the minimum wage and tying it to cost of living? You must mean CLASS WARFARE. Get up in there, Bam Bam.

6:57: Long, significant chunk of foreign policy. Symbolically, the radio cut out and I could only catch “Afghanistan…al Qaeda…drawdown…cyberterrorism…trade agreements…eff you, Assad…always stand strong with Israel…” So obviously, I assume that means all our problems are solved and handled.

7:08: Gay soldiers! Women in combat! Voting suppression! GUN CONTROL! Somebody got his swagger back like whoa – bringing the police chiefs into it is a really, really smart move.

7:11: Powerful repetition. “It deserves a vote.” Gabby Giffords, Aurora, Newtown, Oak Creek, on and on, deserve a vote. Emotional/rhetorical heart of this speech.

7:15: Classic liberal message: we don’t have to achieve perfection, but we have to attempt improvement. This was a ballsy, ambitious speech from a president with a very serious agenda in his lame-duck term, cobbled together with a goodish number of meaningless platitudes around some pretty significant policy; global warming, gun control, immigration AND education reform.

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January 26, 2013 by Rachel

How is the imminent threat of communism like a rainbow?

…whether or not you can see it, and how clearly, depends almost entirely on where you stand.

In a fascinating paper (subscription required) on the similarities between left- and right-wing radicals, Herbert McClosky and Dennis Chong argue that if one drifts far enough, the political left-right continuum becomes more like a ring, rather than a straight number line. If this concept seems counterintuitive, imagine the wariness of ‘the male gaze’ that a women’s studies major and a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist might share. Other, similar attitudes spring to mind where the extremes on the left and right share a common stance (natural child birth, maintaining your family’s food supply, other expressions of dissatisfaction with the mainstream status quo).

But crucially, it’s the zealotry, inflexibility, intolerance of dissent, and affection for conspiracy theories – the frameworks for political thought and action – that truly unite the fringes of both sides. The self-image as a “persecuted minority” who are disrespected, passed over and mistreated on the individual level is shared by both sides of the political divide. So too is a lack trust in electoral outcomes generally, and in other individuals specifically. It is funny that this generalized distrust of institutions, characterized as corporations (including the media) and the wealthy by the left, and the “entrenched liberal establishment” (academia, the media, and government bureaucracy) by the right, leaves both ends of the spectrum so susceptible to the conspiratorial fantasies that thrive in the fever swamps.

Thus, you end up with both sides certain that our once-great, beloved nation is hurtling towards a political extreme which is anathema to their views. According to Chong,

“…the radicals of the left and right insist on the more dire conclusion that America is approaching the abyss represented by either communism or fascism – depending on the ideological vantage point of the doomsayer. Such apocalyptic forebodings symbolize the crude and indiscriminate political analysis habitual among extremists of both sides.”

Translating for the truthers, birthers, occupiers and tea partiers: your belief in the takeover of America by hostile forces says quite a bit more about you, than it does about the state of the nation. Also, please stop forwarding me emails.